Insanity ;-)

All of the above, including (in this heat) insanity! :)

Maybe I could sum it up by saying it gives me a deep sense of satisfaction to do so. The health, etc. are just great fringe benefits.

Nice garden! You're way ahead of me (in WI), but that's understandable, in zone 10.
I like gardening because I feel like I create something out of "nothing" with just some sun, water, and time. It is really satisfying to go shopping in your backyard for supper ingredients. I'm feeling really sorry I didn't plant more lettuce and spinach, since I've been enjoying salads most every night this week.
I'm not a naturally active person, so the exercise is good for me. And weeds beg to be pulled, and little plants ask for water, so I don't ignore them.
I like that my two little boys can eat healthy stuff around the yard, and will hopefully grow up liking vegetables. I might need to hide some sugar snap peas from them though, if I want any for our dinner!

This is an opening too good to pass up. I'll cut and paste below a short piece I wrote a couple years ago titled The Truth About Gardening. I wrote it because I was amazed at how compelling growing food had become for me, and I didn't really know why. So, a bit of whimsey seemed the best explanation :)

The Truth About Gardening

You may be wondering where this increased interest in Home Gardening is heading. I can tell you, but first you need to know where it came from.

You've heard the term "vegetable loony"? Turns out, it's not a euphemism. It's a clinical condition. That's right: insanity. The type of insanity? Possession.

It's scary, I know, and shocking. But bear with me.
Now I assume you want to know who or what is doing the possession? The spirits of the plants. The Devas and Nature Spirits. Why? Because they're fed up. Absolutely, totally, completely fed up with the chemical fertilizers we've been, quite literally, shoving down their throats, the poisons we've been spraying on them willy nilly, destroying the soil structure and starving them of micronutrients. So, late in 2005 they got together (don't ask me where, probably a Marriott some place) and hatched a plan: infiltrate the psyches of several million humans and make them do it their way. Why else would so many people have gone through such an abrupt personality change: from being career minded individuals with a variety of leisure time interests, to wanting nothing more than to push around wheelbarrows full of compost? It's possession, plain and simple.

Where is all this heading? To enlightenment, of course. Have you noticed how quiet your mind is while you're working in the garden? People spend years in ashrams to get to the mental state you can achieve in ten minutes just weeding the asparagus.

It's also heading toward community building through CSAs and farmer's markets, a resurgence in small farms, and children who actually know where food comes from. It's heading toward healthier soil, air, waterways and bodies.

It's heading lots of places, maybe even all the way to healing the planet. We can't know every piece of it yet. We're just the vehicles. The spirits of the plant world have us in their clutches, and they're not going to let go until strawberries are sweet again, all tomatoes are picked ripe, and the hottest blog topic each week is chicken or horse manure rather than the bull-produced kind.

For the good food, the health aspect, and it's my "therapy".

In some way I think I can control nature(go ahead and laugh)and try to achieve perfection. But I also want just the right variety of cucumber for the right recipe of gerhkin pickle. (This hobby may have gotten out of control.) And I like to give food to people and make them happy.

I've "always" been an ornamental gardener -- just thought I'd try growing "something useful" as my husband puts it (farmer's son)! When I had my 1st squash forming I got SO excited that I made my husband and 13 year old son come out to the garden to admire it. My son said "I'll NEVER get this 45 seconds of my life back!" I laughed and laughed .... the circle of life!

That's funny Deborah. :D
I love the idea of eating quality food that you grow, plus saving money, plus I like being outside, and other reasons.

It's very satisfying, growing your own food. Addicting, too! I find it easy to obsess over it (I am sure most of you can relate..heh).

My kids and I love cherry tomatoes, they are outrageously expensive at the store and don't taste nearly as good as home grown. It's fun - trying different veggies, different varieties, methods, etc.

1- Specialty produce (non-bell sweet peppers, herbs, etc) is way too expensive.

2- Varieties/tastes that are hard to find... Canning a tomato you -know- is going to be good to your own tastes is so much more rewarding than wondering how sugary/acidic your canned tomatoes you bought at the store are going to be.

3- The hobby/tinkering/experimental aspect (especially breeding) has always interested me as a way to spend time.

The challenge!

To save money, and because I need to do something outside.

Besides the challenge, the only sure way to get really fresh food is to grow it myself. I've been scarfing down fresh new peas for the last week or so, love them raw or barely blanched. I go out to pick them twice a day in the season, so they won't lose the sweetness. Canned or frozen peas - won't touch them.

How do people manage not to garden? Explain this. I grew things even while living in an apartment. Was never able not to.

The more food production became central, and owned by a few conglomerate giants, the more I felt compelled to by-pass the system. When it started coming in from off-shore that cinched it.

I like to have my food not only super fresh, but handy. It's nice to know if you need a few spuds or to make a salad, you only need to walk outside. I also like to know what is in and on my food and the only way I can control that is to grow it myself. I garden to save money and also to build up a big supply for when veggies are off season, so it goes hand-in-hand with home canning and if (God forbid) an emergency does happen, or I'm snowed in, I have food and plenty of it. I grow veggies because I like to garden and unlike flowers, they pay me back in a tangible way. I garden because, well.......because I can garden and I don't understand why everybody doesn't feel the same way. It's as much a part of my home manager chores as laundry or cooking.

To grow strange and unusual foodstuffs that I would otherwise never see.

My crops this year include:
Bhut Jolokia, Butch T Trinidad Scorpion, and 7-Pot Doughlahs, the three hottest peppers in the world.
Blue tomatoes
Black corn
Purple potatoes
White watermelons
Black bell peppers
Kiwano melons

And I've got a couple of california giant sequoia redwoods that are a couple feet tall now just for giggles.

Only way I can put so many veggies in our stomachs!
They are so expensive in stores. Also I do enjoy it (Most of the time!)

I garden for several reasons:

1) to have fresh vegetables for my family;

2) for the satisfaction of seeing things grow from just a seed (it is scientific I know but also there is a spiritual aspect of it for me);

3) because it makes me feel smart to be able to figure out how best to grow all the things we want to grow. It makes me feel almost like a scientist, to research ways to grow things better, what varieties to grow,etc. It's an avenue for learning.

4) Finally, my last reason is "serenity" which is what I find when I am working alone in my garden. Every worry, problem, nuisance leaves my mind when I get into weeding, planting, or harvesting or watering.

Thank you for asking this poignant question.

For me, my why is because of a tomato. I want to dragon kick every grocery store manager who thinks he is selling a good product.

Compare the grocery store tomato, harvested when it is hard and green, and "ripened" with ethylene gas to achieve a red color. Harvesting when they are green insures that the fruit wont bruise during transport to grocery stores across the nation. Of course, packaging tomatoes properly so that they wont bruise, or trucking produce in refrigerated trucks would be good, but they don't want to spend that kind of money, its not cost effective. Damn ferengis..

I'm a, you know, perfectionist, and the taste of a BLT made with home grown tomatoes that actually ARE ripe doesn't hold a candle to store bought imitation vegetables. They may LOOK the same, but the flavors are all wrong.

SCREW commercialism!

When we decided, as a society to change from local community bakeries and canning at home and having local butchers... to wal-marts on every corner, replacing all the bakery's and Butchers and local growers with processed centralized crap, we sold our souls, in my humble opinion.

But, But, But chris, produce at wal mart is cheaper! Yeah and it all tastes like cardboard, the break baked at wal mart is crap compared to the bread I can make myself, the meat cuts they sell are low grade select cuts. PLUS, any time one of the vegetable pickers forgets to wash his hands or cover his mouth when he coughs, there is an outbreak of salmonella...

Do I want to garden? eh, If I could buy what I grow at the store for less than an entire wage, probably not. But no one in commercial America is interested in doing a good job, they are all focused on profits. There is nothing wrong with profits, but heirloom vegetables just don't produce the kinds of yields that are needed for multi million dollar profits, while tasteless hybrids that have been bred for yield do give them bumper crops.

But Gardening for me is not just about taste, its cheaper, I'm tired of paying for $3 per pound ground beef and 99 cent peppers, the cost of all produce is tied to the price of diesel, what it costs to truck food from where it is grown to where it is sold, and lately, diesel is expensive, so food is expensive.

It does give me satisfaction, knowing I grew food for my family, but for me, its about flavor, and how growing it myself is the only way to get that flavor.

I can't add much to the list... I agree wholeheartedly freshness, variety, organic, locally produced, something to do outdoors, all resulting in peace of mind... Well, now that I think of it, I can add that when I garden, my thoughts often turn to how my ancestors lived & provided their own food, and wonder how I can live a simpler and more traditional lifestyle.

I find it a much more enjoyable way to fight middle-age spread. I am not likely to pay for a gym membership so I can run in place, I like activity with a purpose. The work I do, I do because I need the money. Gardening I do because I love it. I love the intellectual stimulation, I like working with the beauty of the plants, I also like the rhythm of the seasons. I appreciate the busy time and I also appreciate the down times when everything is covered in snow or frozen and I can sit by the fire with seed catalogs and dream grandiose things about next year. There is also the financial part of gardening. I can go to a local nursery and spend $30 and get 10 perennials which will beautify the place for years whereas $30 will only get 1 gallon of good paint and that will not even cover 1 whole room. I also consider this an investment in my kids inheritance. Someday one of them will either live here or they will sell the place and hopefully the better it looks, they more money they will get for their future. On a less philosophical note, I also garden to avoid housework, which I loathe.

Thanks for the feedback.